Could This Be The Future Of How You Work?

This female-centric office trend has just arrived in Australia. Would you try it?

One Roof, a co-working space in Southbank, Melbourne, is always a flurry of activity. Set over a sprawling 1,000 square metres, festooned with hanging planters and colourful modernist furniture, it is the home of 78 different Australian startups and sole traders right now.

It's here that these entrepreneurs gather to work, meet, pitch and share ideas, to mull over the future of their businesses and network with other similar-minded self-starters. There's weekly social media and IT support sessions, wellness workshops, meditation classes and a full-scale reception service. The coffee is strong. The connections are even stronger.

That's because almost every single person who works out of the One Roof co-working space is a woman.

Meditation, sunlight and the art of the hustle. Things successful people know.

Meditation, sunlight and the art of the hustle. Things successful people know.

The future is female

"I used to work in a corporate law firm," One Roof founder, Melbournian Sheree Rubinstein tells whimn.com.au.

"Over time, I started to realise the challenges of being a female within this environment, particularly getting the sense that being a woman could affect my chances of success, which really frustrated me. This frustration is where my passion for supporting women in business and women entrepreneurs came from."

Sheree Rubinstein. Photo: SuppliedSource:Whimn

She started hosting networking events, focus groups and fireside chats with women-led businesses, which sparked the idea of an all-female working space. Ever the cautious entrepreneur, she rented an Airbnb to test the waters. It was an instant, sell-out success.

"After that we launched our own website using Squarespace," Rubinstein says "that allowed us to tap into a far wider audience of clients, members and supporters."

The team travelled to Los Angeles, New York and Sydney to host all-female networking events, before settling on their palatial space in Southbank as a permanent location.

"I believe a co-working space is a great place to start [as an entrepreneur]," Rubinstein explains, when discussing what the women of One Roof get out of the membership. "You build confidence each day as you chat to people about the things that are on your mind. Women working from home feel isolated and don’t have the same drive as when they collaborate. Connecting with people is where the best ideas come from."

A room of one's own

One Roof is just the Australian equivalent of a growing global groundswell of all-female or female-centric co-working spaces and clubs. There's the soon-to-open The AllBright in Bloomsbury in London, the first female-only workspace of its kind in the UK. "We see a route to progress by pulling women together, and it feels like the time is now," co-founder Anna Jones told the Sunday Times. "It’s a movement, and a mission.”

Then there's Wildflower collective, a brunch supper club for millennials in New York, usually hosted at co-founder Maria Sulimirski's flat. Her Global Network is another American-based group for women, with outfits in 15 different cities.

"The idea is that you can travel anywhere and you will find friends and business contacts," co-founder Aleksandra Avli toldQuartzy.

You'll notice almost all of these co-working spaces and clubs are the product of more than one entrepreneur's vision. Such is the beauty of shine theory, or the idea of women supporting other women to raise the whole collective up. Most all-female working spaces offer not only an area to work but also to meet other women, learn about their career and ideas, and to offer advice, empathy and commiseration.

Wing woman

The exemplar of the genre, of course, is The Wing. The exclusive female-only club opened this time last year in the Flatiron District of New York, with annual membership fees of the not insignificant amount of almost $4,000 per member. (For that price you receive unlimited access to the space, food and drinks throughout the day, access to the blow dry and beauty bar and first-round tickets to the club's special events, like screenings of The Handmaid's Tale and holiday gift markets).

Some 8,000 people are currently on the waiting list for membership to the club, and the chance to recline on those millennial pink lounges and share a glass of iced tea in the library stocked with women-only authors.

This week, The Wing announced it had received $52.5 million of funding, partially led by co-working aggravator WeWork. Co-founder - yep, another one - Audrey Gelman told Fortune they would use the money to expand to more locations (Soho launched earlier this year, with Brooklyn and Washington D.C to come in early 2018), expand its staff, beef up its activist footprint and launch a scholarship program for women who can't afford the membership fees.

Like The Wing, One Roof is already fast-approaching capacity at its Southbank location. "We are currently talking to female-centric co-working spaces across the world, one in China, one in Israel and one in New York," Rubinstein says. "I would also love to incorporate childcare into One Roof."

The goal, she says, is women supporting women across a number of different fields in every aspect of their working life. And from where she's standing, the future looks bright.